Despite the Odds
by docs pupil
Summary: Even drunk, the Sole Survivor can still save the day.
1. Part 1

_Author's Note: Just recently found out you can have actual drunk conversations in game._

At the stroke of midnight, Robert MacCready, and the Sole Survivor sit side by side in the ancillary room of the Third Rail with nothing more on their minds than drinking and scheming.

"Nobody's eeever intimated by me. They're intimated by you," she jabs the air in his direction with her unsteady finger. "And Hancock, and *hiccup* Codsworth, but not me."

MacCready hides his smug grin behind a long swig of whiskey. Not two hours ago, he took his thoroughly clean-cut, sickeningly wholesome employer out for a drink just to see if he could, and here she is with two bottles of beer already in her system, and another half of one in her hand. As much as she has used her silver tongue to convince everyone and their brother to think her way, he always had a few tricks of his own he never showed; until now, that is.

"This stuff doesn' taste good." The lady tilts the bottle up towards her eye as she squints down the neck. *hiccup* "Where's the Nukey-Coca?"

"Watch it, will you," he tells her, lowering her hand and laughing.

She kept insisting the whole way to Goodneighbor, she didn't partake in alcohol, nor had she ever in two hundred years, and now he knows why. She couldn't hold it.

"Is it because you have a tiny beard?" She gasps, coming to a revelation. "Maybe I should grow a tiny beard?! Or maybeits your girl eyes." She hiccups, tugging at the sides of her own eyes with her fingers. "All squinty and angry." She takes a sip, resting her head on his shoulder. "Do you think I'm cute? And be honesht."

"It depends. Can you still pick locks drunk, cutie?"

She smiles wide and long like an idiot, leaping unsteadily to her feet. "Le's go do things." Listing to her left, the woman wanders off to the bar, poking fun at bartender Whitehall. Finding herself quickly bored of being talked back to by an angry, cockney robot, the young lady tries with all her might to spin in her stationary bar stool. Her flailing legs manage to kick a nearby patron, spilling his drink down the front of his dingy shirt. Even buzzed, she realizes her faux paus. "Oops..."

The man proceeds to wipe at the spillage with his even dirtier hands. "You bitch!"

"Hey! *hiccup* "That's not a very nice word!" The lady places her fists on her hips.

Her mercenary escort roughly grabs her forearm, dragging her toward the stairs. "Come on, you're drunk."

She wrenches out of his grasp, shouting across the room. "I'm not the bish 'cause your face looks like a dog's butt!" She giggles. "I said 'butt'."

"Is that an insult?!" The inebriated man narrows his eyes at the two. "Did you just insult me?!"

"I can't insult something that's true," the young lady calls back from the middle of the stairwell, giggling even more. "Dog butt!"

"Oh come on!" He pulls her arm harder, leading her into the street.

The wet man nods and two others from a nearby table stand up in unison, hands at the automatic guns on their belts. "Nobody insults the Gun Runners."

"Owie!" She frowns at his rough handling of her, as he leads her around the corner and down the street to the entrance of the town. "You're hurting me!" The lady nearly trips over her high heels trying to keep up with his hastened pace.

The young man shoves open the front gate, almost tossing her out himself. "Do you have a death wish, or something?! They work for the people who want me dead!"

"Nothing's gonna hap*hic*pen," she slurs, dusting off her grey, sequin dress. "I promish."

"Hey!" Three weapons begin spraying bullets in their direction.

He yanks her again by the arm, down behind a rusting, burnt car, wondering where the other two shooters came from so fast.

The three men in question take cover behind adjacent broken buildings and a battered mailbox. They shoot at random intervals, breaking the last remnants of the car's window to bullet-riddled pieces.

The adventurous duo duck lower out of instinct.

MacCready sounds out an irritated groan, biting back a curse. "We're pinned down!" He pulls his weapon from his coat. "Because of you and your big mouth!"

"I promished, remember." She looks him in the eye as seriously as she can.

He sees her unwavering conviction, and wants to believe her, but just in case they both die in a hail of bullets, he adds his own brand of sarcasm to his rebuttal. "Yeah, I believe you." He checks to see if his rifle is loaded.

The girl pokes her head around the corner of the nose of the car, seeing three assailants in dirty shirts and jeans with three fully automatic guns. Against one trained rifle, they were still more than a match. They needed to even the odds slightly. The former Vaultee looks at the holster at her hip, frowning, then at her Pip-Boy, inquisitively. She unlatches the weighty piece of technology from her wrist, shoving it in MacCready's face. "Pu' it on."

He waves away her gadget, reloading his rifle. "Not now."

She presses the screen to the side of his head. "Pu' it on," the woman insists.

"Stop it!" Shoving her hand away, he fires off a few shots in quick succession, keeping them behind their equally meager cover.

"Pu' it on," she whines, as he ducks out of the line of automatic fire.

"Alright I'll put it on!" He snatches it from her hand, slapping the leathery wristband onto his right forearm.

She reaches over and adjusts it the right way, removing his wristwatch to put in on her own wrist.

It pinches, but doesn't weight his trigger hand down as much as he thought it would.

"Give us the big mouth bitch, and we'll leave you alive, MacCready," one of the three gunmen shouts across the street. "Remember, we still got orders to kill you!"

Angrily, he cocks his rifle, taking careful aim over the hood. He catches one of their shoulders as they lean out of cover to shoot.

The young lady tugs at his sleeve. "Cositrate harder."

"What?"

"Think harder...to slow down." She slumps lower to the dirt, feeling nauseated and tired.

He ignores her drunken ramblings, carefully aiming for the top of the head poking out from behind a mailbox.

As if on cue, he feels the whole of his being shift ever-so-slightly, slowing his perception to crawl. He can see them moving in slow-motion, taking aim. With a mere shift of the eye, he finds picking and choosing the body parts of a target easier than his self-trained brain could ever imagine. Overcoming his awe, he follows his first instinct and aims for three heads. The mercenary exhales, ready to pull the trigger, feeling that minute shift reverse itself as quickly as it overcame him.

In the span of a few seconds, three bodies hit the floor.

"Did you see-" The young man's amazement is cut short by the soft snoring of the passed out girl in her grey, sequin dress. He frowns. "You couldn't pass out back in the bar, it had to be now?" He mentally curses his employer, hefting both his weapon and the former Vault dweller onto his back. "Figures."


	2. Part 2

_Author's Note: My brain has gone to a silly place in this second part._

Tromping through the tall grass and dead bushes, the lanky young man huffs and puffs to the Red Rocket gas station, dumping her passed out form onto the refurbished couch out front. He pushes her feet to one side, plopping down to rest.

"Go get 'em, boy!"

Dogmeat sprints around the corner of the building, leaping playfully at MacCready.

"Looks like you two had fun," Piper says, following around the same corner.

"Don't ask." He scratches behind the dog's ear, telling him how much of a good boy he is.

"Well then sorry I missed it." She approaches the slumbering young lady curled up on the couch. "So, are you gonna carry her home, or what?"

"Not on your life." MacCready throws in the towel. "I carried her most of the way here, I'm not lifting another finger."

"Hmm." Piper ponders the predicament with folded arms, then an inspiration hits her. "Watch this." The journalist whistles provocatively. "Hey baby!" She smacks the Sole Survivor square on the behind, jumping back.

Startled from a dead sleep, the drunk girl leaps to her feet, swinging at the first human-shaped thing within reach.

"Whoa there Blue!" She catches the angry girl in her arms before she falls flat on her face. "He's gone, don't worry."

"Wha' a pervert." *hiccup*

"Tell you what, let's get you home before the perverts come back." She nods at the sitting man who grudgingly obliges her with a helping hand.

The drunk woman's companions each hook an arm around her middle, and drape one of hers across their shoulders.

"Good heavens!" Codsworth hovers toward the three of them, concerned for the slumping woman between them, dragging her feet. "Is she alright?" He presses a claw to her forehead as if feeling for a temperature.

"She's fine, just drunk," the journalist clarifies.

The robot pushes open the front door, ushering them down the hall to her bedroom.

They lay her down, gently, wandering out into her newly remodeled living room for a rest of their own.

"Your coffee, Miss Wright." The robot gingerly sets the pot down on the island counter, floating away to the next room to check on his sleeping Mistress.

Piper pours herself a mugful, blowing over the top of the beverage a few times. "It's actually kinda cute how she tricks you into watching her back."

"Believe it or not, I'm not as gullible as you think I look." He seats himself on the living room couch, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. "I can tell when someone's screwing with me."

She carefully sips, looking down into her mug in awe of the flavor.

The green bot hovers back down the hall, maneuvering over to the other visitor. "Feet _off_ the table, Sir," Codsworth commands, swatting at his dirty boots on the polished surface.

He gives the robot butler a dirty look as it moves away, putting his tired feet up on the couch instead.

"Uh huh..." The reporter rests her elbows on the counter top, attempting to fish for more than just boring details. "You sure about that, _MacCready_?" She puts just enough of a provocative edge on his name to grate on his nerves.

"I'd be dead if I didn't," he mumbles, nestling comfortably into the living room couch, his hat pulled down over his eyes.

Finding her opportunity for gossip wasted, literally and metaphorically, the journalist shrugs off her bad luck at hearing the man's soft snores.

Codsworth hovers over to MacCready, poking him gently on the shoulder a few times.

"He's asleep, Codsworth," Piper says from across the small room, sipping at her steaming mug. "Poke him in the morning."

"But his shoes," the robo-butler laments, examining the dirt on the sofa with all three of his eyes. "They're filthy."

"On come on." She makes an exaggerated pouting face at him. "You wouldn't want the lady of the house mad at you, would you?"

"Indeed not," he jumps slightly up and down in an irritated fashion, leaving the room briefly.

"For being made out of metal, he's sure touchy," the lady reporter mentally notes.

He comes back with a blanket, draping it over the sleeping man. "Sleep well, Sir."


End file.
